


Happy

by ToxicPineapple



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Background Amasai - Freeform, Background Tenkaede, Character Study, Conversations, Established Relationship, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Introspection, Melancholy, Minor Character Death, Moving On, Past Relationships, Remember Maki's childhood friend from her FTEs, Weddings, Yeah she was in love with that girl, i don't take constructive criticism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26917450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToxicPineapple/pseuds/ToxicPineapple
Summary: After a moment, Maki lowers her gaze. Eye contact has always been difficult for her. “I’m fine,” she huffs, because she is, and she messes with a piece of lace on the skirt of her gown in lieu of her hair, wanting somewhere else to direct her attention while she speaks. As difficult as it is to meet Kaede’s eyes, being vulnerable has always been harder. “I’m just… thinking about my old friend.”“Oh!” Kaede’s eyes widen with realisation. “The one from the orphanage?”“Who else?” Maki’s tone is cutting. “And don’t say it like that, like you’re having some epiphany.” Maybe Kaede senses that she doesn’t exactly mean to be hostile, because she just smiles, softly, one of her hands going to rest on Maki’s shoulder. Maki tenses under the touch, but then forces herself to relax. It’s just Kaede, her best friend, the girl who’s been there for her since they were in high school. Maki has never had to worry about Kaede. Kaede is an idiot, but the world would be better if there were more people like her.---On the day of her wedding, Maki contemplates the past, and letting go.
Relationships: Harukawa Maki/Momota Kaito
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24





	Happy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silveryyy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveryyy/gifts).



> happy birthday arisa! i'm sorry this is a few days late, i meant to post on the day of but motivation is hard and amami week drained me for juice KFJSDFKJ anyway! i love you dearly and i hope you like this, i know you're more into other pairings now too but i've been wanting to write some kaimaki for a bit :333
> 
> you're such a sweet and caring person, please don't ever feel like you don't have a place in our group because that couldn't be further from the truth. no matter how busy you get we will always love you and want you around. happy sixteen, you're one of my favourite people and i hope this year treats you beautifully.

Maki avoids making eye contact with herself in the mirror, opting instead to watch Kaede’s hands as they dance over her hair, weaving in intricate braids like she’s done it all her life. She’s always been good with her hands, Maki muses; hands which, like Maki’s fiance’s, are smooth and soft and gentle. Nothing like Maki’s rough, scarred hands. Hands that have been used only for what they’re capable of; to cause unimaginable pain.

Hands that Maki now uses to smooth down the folds of her white dress, folding her fingers and brushing the material with her knuckles so that the sweat that’s pooling in her palms doesn’t ruin anything. Her heart is beating harder than it has any right to, her throat drying out the longer she sits here. The only thing she has to ground herself is the feel of her best friend working on her hair, and Kaede’s touch is gentle enough that it’s not that much of a stabiliser.

Not that Maki would ever ask her to be rough, but. It’s something that occurs to her.

“Are you excited?” Kaede asks, and Maki blinks, remembering where she is. She folds her hands together in her lap. “They want to do a couple pictures the girls and Hoshi-kun, and then the ceremony is going to start!”

After a moment, Maki replies, “All the girls?”

“Well,” Kaede laughs a little, “I guess not Tenko. She’s probably suffering hanging out with all those boys right now.” She giggles, holding out her hand, and Maki obligingly hands her a ribbon so that she can finish off the plait. “It’s a testament to how much she cares about Kaito that she agreed to be one of his grooms...women,” Kaede giggles some more. “I’m sure she’ll have a lot of complaints about having to spend time with Kaito and then the lovebirds when we get home tonight.”

Maki rolls her eyes.  _ What  _ Kaito was thinking, putting Shuichi and Rantaro both on the groom’s side of the wedding, she’ll never know. It’s going to be really strange watching Kaede walk with Shuichi down the aisle, no matter how much Kaito used to ship them back in high school. “If I walk down the aisle and there’s a bruise on Kaito’s face, I’m going to laugh.”

“You wouldn’t!” Kaede protests, but she’s only laughing harder now.

“I might,” Maki grumbles, puffing out her cheeks, reaching instinctively for a twintail that isn’t there. She wouldn’t, Kaede is right. Not that Maki has ever been particularly amused by pain, but especially not Kaito’s. Not when he’s always been so good at hiding it, not when he’s the only person she’s ever loved as strongly as she loves him.

...Well. That’s not a correct statement, really. Before Kaito, there was… someone else, but she’s… long in the past, really, so there’s no point in dwelling on it. Maki can’t decide whether to hope that her old friend is here in spirit, watching the wedding, wishing them the best, or to hope that she’s not, so that she never has to see Maki lean in to kiss someone else, so that she never has to  _ know  _ that Maki didn’t keep her promise, that Maki… moved on, despite everything. That Maki got away.

They were just children, back then. It’s weird to talk about the promises they made as if they should carry any weight. But at the same time, the fact that they were children almost makes those promises even more important to keep. Almost makes it even worse that she’s breaking them.

“You okay?” Kaede’s voice is gentle, but it still drags Maki out of her thoughts. Maki lifts her gaze and meets tilted, concerned plum eyes through the mirror, presses her lips together at Kaede’s tone. She doesn’t need to be coddled. “I think you spaced out for a minute.”

After a moment, Maki lowers her gaze. Eye contact has always been difficult for her. “I’m fine,” she huffs, because she is, and she messes with a piece of lace on the skirt of her gown in lieu of her hair, wanting somewhere else to direct her attention while she speaks. As difficult as it is to meet Kaede’s eyes, being  _ vulnerable  _ has always been harder. “I’m just… thinking about my old friend.”

“Oh!” Kaede’s eyes widen with realisation. “The one from the orphanage?”

“Who else?” Maki’s tone is cutting. “And don’t say it like that, like you’re having some epiphany.” Maybe Kaede senses that she doesn’t exactly mean to be hostile, because she just smiles, softly, one of her hands going to rest on Maki’s shoulder. Maki tenses under the touch, but then forces herself to relax. It’s just Kaede, her best friend, the girl who’s been there for her since they were in high school. Maki has never had to worry about Kaede. Kaede is an idiot, but the world would be better if there were more people like her.

It’s something that Maki used to think about her old friend, too. It’s something that Maki thinks every once in a while when she’s sitting in her apartment with Kaito, her legs resting in his lap and a mug of his hot cocoa clutched in her hands, listening to the gruff baritone of his voice as he reads a Japanese translation of  _ Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy  _ aloud to Maki, and to the empty apartment. That moronic as they all are, they’re… sweet. And a part of that idiocy stems  _ from  _ how sweet they are. Kaito and Kaede and Maki’s old friend, they’re the sort of people who you could strike across the face, and they would keep trying to help you, regardless.

Kaito isn’t as overt about it as Kaede or Maki’s friend, though. Maki is pretty sure that that’s because he’s a man. It’s nothing to do with strength, though, so much as it is to do with pride. Kaito hits back, often, specifically when his opponent is someone that can take it, but at the end of the day, he’s… gentle. His hands are large and hairy and his knuckles are scarred, but they’re warm and gentle, too. Back before Maki was able to get away, when she would come back to their shared apartment with cuts and bruises and a heavy, heavy ache in her chest, Kaito’s hands were never smothering, only soothing. It’s a kind of magic that doesn’t require any words. That Maki would do anything to learn.

Maybe if she could, then she could fix Kaito too, the way that he fixes her. She could take away those days where he doesn’t do anything but lie in bed, those nights where he sits in his armchair by the window with the most faraway look on his face, seeming as though he never came back down from the stars to begin with, his brows scrunched up together. Maybe she could take away his need to take care of other people all the time, let him let his guard down, use her hands to massage his shoulders until he lets them drop, stops being the Luminary of the Stars for a moment and just… embraces the fact that he’s Kaito.

(After all, that’s who Maki fell in love with, not the hero, the man behind the mask, Clark Kent, the one who knits under his bead and listens to Disney music and makes midnight trips to the supermarket for bananas whenever he can’t sleep. Sometimes she thinks she does okay at showing how she feels for him, if only because he allowed her to see that side of him in the first place-- because when Kaito feels overwhelmed and tired and helpless, Maki’s phone buzzes, and she excuses herself from whatever she’s doing to take it-- but it always feels so much, and Maki never quite knows what she’s doing, never has, not in the way that Kaede or her friend or Kaito himself might.)

“What are you thinking about her?” Kaede ventures, and Maki realises that she’s spaced out. She blinks, shakes her head quickly (but carefully, so as not to disturb the way her hair is styled) and tries to recollect her thoughts.

“I…” Maki isn’t sure that she wants to talk about this right now with Kaede, but she doesn’t feel like lying is exactly the move here, either. They’ve been friends long enough that Kaede would be able to tell if Maki was being dishonest, and even though she would probably let the subject drop, Maki doesn’t… want to hurt her feelings. And she  _ does  _ trust Kaede, so she doesn’t want to make it seem like she doesn’t. She breathes a sigh. She could probably just  _ say  _ that she doesn’t want to talk about it, but… “I can’t decide if I wish she was here, or I’m grateful that she isn’t.”

“You don’t really mean the second part, do you?” Kaede adjusts a loose strand of Maki’s hair to rest flat in the hairstyle before returning her hands to rest on her shoulders. Maki chews the inside of her cheek. No, she doesn’t mean that second part, but…

“I’ve… we were too young, for it to mean anything,” Maki starts, resting her hands on the desk in front of her. She can barely make herself look at her reflection. That woman, done up to be so beautiful, all her scars carefully hidden underneath white lace, she isn’t familiar to Maki. Maki is fragmented, broken, all her parts too big and uneven, her hands too rough and the set of her jaw too harsh. Maki is the sort of person who hurts people, no matter what Kaito always says. The Harukawa Maki in the mirror is a stranger. “But there was a time when I thought… that if today ever came, I wouldn’t be walking down the aisle to meet Kaito.”

“Or down the aisle at all, it might’ve been her,” Kaede muses, and when Maki glares at her through the mirror, she backtracks with a soft, “Sorry, that was insensitive.”

It was. Kaede says those things sometimes. But Maki isn’t all that bothered. If nothing else, she has thick skin. “It’s fine,” she dismisses, because it is, and because Kaede is right, no matter how much this maybe isn’t the time (if there ever would  _ be  _ the time) to think about things like that. “I don’t even know if she felt the same way, you know. We were young.”

...She held Maki, though, the night after her first mission, when she came back, bruised and bloody and nauseous. She just held her, quietly. She didn’t say that Maki was turning into a monster. Whether or not she thought so didn’t have to be addressed, even if it was the undeniable truth. She just waited for lights out, and then crawled up into Maki’s bunk, and opened her arms, and let Maki burrow into them, as if her friend could protect her from all the horrors, all the pain.

(She couldn’t. She couldn’t even protect herself.)

There’s so much… bitterness, so much regret, and since they never talked about it, Maki hasn’t been able to let go. She never knew how her friend felt. She never  _ will  _ know. Whether they were supposed to be sisters, which people said sometimes, which Maki would’ve accepted, or whether… whether her friend’s heart skipped a beat like hers did, sometimes, when their hands brushed, when their eyes met. Maki would hesitate to call it love, but…

“It feels selfish, to move on,” Maki decides, and she thinks that sounds right, selfish, that’s the proper word to describe her. Even when she became an assassin, it was selfish, to keep her hold on the one thing dear to her that she’d always had, and in the end she didn’t even get to keep her. Because if Maki was all bruising words and selfish actions, her friend was the opposite, tender smiles and sacrifices. Maki wouldn’t have jumped into that car. But her friend did.

“Did you not consider it moving on when you first started going out with Kaito?” Kaede asks. She starts to backtrack, again, probably because it’s another insensitive question, but Maki stops her, because she doesn’t mind.

“I didn’t think about it,” Maki says, which is true. “I tried not to,” she adds, which is truer. She’s  _ been  _ trying not to. And she’s done alright for herself. But right now, it’s… all she can think about.

“You’ll be happy with Kaito, right? You think so? You’ve been happy with him, I’ve thought,” Kaede rubs Maki’s shoulders, lightly, and Maki lets out a quiet hum, closing her eyes. The though is nice, gentle. Kaede’s hands have always been so gentle.

“I know I will,” she says. Her voice is a touch thick. She doesn’t want to finish the statement, but she makes herself do it anyway. “That’s part of why. What right do I have to be happy now when she doesn’t get to be?”

Kaede is quiet for a moment, maybe considering that. Her hands still, and then lift from Maki’s shoulders, and she carefully turns Maki’s chair, crouching down so she’s looking up into Maki’s eyes, gathering rough, scarred hands in her own smooth ones. She smiles. “I think, after what you gave for her all those years ago? She would want you to have this. I think she would want you to be happy.” She squeezes Maki’s hands. “If she was here now, she would tell you to marry Kaito, and to feel good about it.”

And Kaede never knew Maki’s friend, nobody did, except Maki, and even in her case it was such a long time ago it’s really hard to say  _ what  _ she would have thought, but… Kaede is right. Kaede is right. Maki’s friend would want her to be happy.

Even if sometimes (most of the time) Maki feels like she doesn’t deserve it.

This feeling of unsteadiness, of something being wrong, lasts through the rest of the wedding preparations. Even as the music starts playing and Maki begins to walk herself down the aisle, she feels off kilter, uneven. Almost as though she’s going to pass out in the middle of the church.

But then she sees Kaito, standing at the alter with his hands fisted nervously in front of him, an awestruck smile on his face, and her heart does that little flutter-melting thing that it did the first time he called her Harumaki. When she gets close enough, she can meet his eyes through her veil, and even obscured by white lace, they’re the same brilliant, lilac colour they’ve always been.

His hands shake, just a little, as he lifts the veil from her face. He must see the conflict in Maki’s expression, because before he turns to face the officiate, he mumbles, “Alright?”

Maki has to consider the question for a moment, but then she finds herself smiling, minutely, a curve at the edge of her lip, and offering her arm for him to take. She nods.

It’s true, she thinks. She is alright. Even if her friend isn’t here, Kaito is. And her friend would want her to be happy.

That’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> the october birthdays are always the sweetest ones


End file.
